


Detour

by Shampain



Category: Mad Max: Fury Road, The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, F/M, Gen, Inspired by Mad Max Series (Movies), Max Max AU just because okay, everyone is still an elf or a dwarf or whatever okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 18:02:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4574433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shampain/pseuds/Shampain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The world was spread out around her like a slumbering beast and Tauriel was scared, but she knew it didn't matter. Her gaze flicked from her rear windows to the skyline, over to where the mirror signalling from Angmar flashed like a burning-out comet. She blinked fumes from her eyes and turned the rig off road.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Tauriel, a lead Imperator in Azog's army, goes rogue with precious cargo. Thorin, once royal and now touched by dragon-sickness, finds himself being used as a personal blood bag to a mongrel named Smaug. Mad Max: Fury Road Hobbit AU, because.... well because I don't have a life that's why okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Detour

**Author's Note:**

> I would be absolutely SHOCKED if this hasn't been done yet, but I got an idea and then I had to do it ajahdfsjfhsd I'm sorry not sorry. Not sure if I'll ever do anything more with this. Maybe I'll write this in a collection of drabbles. What do you think?  
> I tried to pick places in Middle-earth that had the taint of evil to it, as well as a place that was actually to the west of Mirkwood. I also tried not to make the dialogue completely identical to the film.
> 
>  _ash nazg gimbatul_ \- one ring to find them

She was narrow and lean. She was an elf but that could only be obvious by one side of her face, where her ear was still intact; she had lost most of the other a long time ago in a crash that had also taken her arm. Once long, luxurious hair was shorn close to her scalp, revealing a few unsightly scars along the back of her head. If one looked closely it might be noted that Imperator Tauriel had once been beautiful, but that was a memory for the past. And it was better that way. There was only one place in this land where beauty was prized, and that was no place for Tauriel, no place for anybody.

She took up the wheel, fashioned in the image of a ring, its dark and evil script chipped along the edge, and twisted it into place. They worshipped the wheel, this ring; every car, rig, bike and trike had its own which the war-orcs would rise up to the heavens in gladness whenever they should take them out into the desert.

She closed her eyes and listened to Azog's voice, vibrating through the canyon. She listened to the rage inside of her, curled up in her chest like a sleeping dragon. All of the real dragons were dead; they, along with much of the land, had perished long ago. She remembered, though. That was the curse of her people. All that was left were poisonous fumes which burned across the earth, touched people in horrible ways. Some of Azog's orcs had a rush of the dragonflame to them. Some people were born without limbs, with flesh festering even as they drew their first bawling breath. And others, still, were touched by the dragon sickness that ate the mind, drove men mad.

“...Once again I salute my Imperator Tauriel and I salute my half-life war-orcs who will ride with me eternal...”

Tauriel took a deep breath through her nostrils. Soon it would be time to go. Soon, her redemption would be at hand. She could smell the grease she coated the dome of her head with, smeared over her eyes in warpaint. The land was baking under the sun. She shifted gears with one hand, her metal arm draped over the side of the door, through the open window. Tauriel tasted dust and blood, sweat and tears. She felt the presence of her cargo bundled up behind her, living, breathing, frightened, strong.

“... It is by my hand that you will rise from the ashes of this world...”

 _Ashes_ , thought Tauriel. Dust. Death. That was all Azog would ever offer.

The war rig rolled out like a crash from a mountain which had long ago ground down to dust.

To say she had stolen them would have been wrong. And she was not liberating them, either. She was offering a mode of transport; and to be honest, they were saving her as well as themselves. _We must work together_ , Eowyn had breathed in the darkness, when the men could not hear. _Our only hope is in each other_.

Hope. Home.

Tauriel would take them home.

The world was spread out around her like a slumbering beast and Tauriel was scared, but she knew it didn't matter. Her gaze flicked from her rear windows to the skyline, over to where the mirror signalling from Angmar flashed like a burning-out comet. She blinked fumes from her eyes and turned the rig off road.

She could practically feel the consternation of her lancers and the rest of the convoy when they realized what was going on. She didn't flinch when the pale face of her second-in-command loomed through her window.

“Boss!” he asked. “We're not going to Angmar?”

She was silent.

“Ettenmoors?”

Tauriel looked at him, unimpressed, because it was not his place to question her motives, though it was understandable he might wish to know. “We're heading east,” she said.

“I'll pass it down the line.” He disappeared from view.

Strength, Tauriel. Strength.

 

There was nothing left for him in this cursed land. Once, he'd been a king. Or a future king, at any rate.

But now he knew there was nothing in the future; the future was the present and it was hard and grinding and endless as long as you were alive. And what was life anymore? He couldn't remember it, so he might just be dead. He saw ghosts wherever he went. Maybe he was one of them, wandering, tormented and tormenting.

The war-orcs kept him caged and muzzled, because he could not be trusted to lay docile otherwise. And why should he? Thorin knew only the fight, no matter how useless it might have been to him now. He had nowhere to go and yet he would run, run, run towards the horizon. He would never stop.

His thoughts swam like his consciousness as he hung, upside down, a needle jammed into his artery. The war-orc was not an orc – that, he assumed, was just a name for them, for though they did not all follow their leader in race they pursued him in all else, including name. This one was a mongrel like most of them, skinny, weak, feeding off of Thorin's blood. He had a sheen of red underneath his white-powdered exterior, like he was burning up inside, and his eyes were reptilian.

 _Dragon_ , thought Thorin, and he laughed inside of his head, and cried some, too.

Around him, the war-orcs were suddenly whipping up into a frenzy, rushing past the sick ones hooked up to their blood bags. Thorin's gazed around in eager interest. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “Hey! What's going on?”

“Treason! Betrayal! An Imperator gone rogue!” exclaimed one, rushing by. They were all clambering over to a pile of wheels, sprayed golden and shaped like rings. Thorin thought he recognized a wheel that might once have been his, before they took it away.

“Which Imperator?”

“Tauriel! She took a lot of Azog's stuff!”

“What stuff!”

Thorin closed his eyes, tried to tune them out, but it was no use. He was listening. Their words were like smears of colour on his brain because that was how he thought, now; that was how the world seemed to him. Endless hallucinations, half-seen memories.

He opened his eyes and stared at the wall.

“If you can't walk then you can't do war!”

“No!”

 _Die_ , thought Thorin. _Die, die, die_.

“You're my lancer!”

“I promoted myself!”

“I'm not staying here dying soft!” he screamed

“Yer practically a corpse already, Smaug!” one of the men – not an orc or even a half-orc, but a man, full-blooded and bearded, laughed.

“I just need a top-up!”

“There's no time!”

And then the boy was looking at Thorin. He couldn't see him but he could sense his gaze, desperate, cloying. “We'll take my blood bag! We'll take him and strap him to the lancer's perch!”

 

The war rig churned clouds of dust into the air as Tauriel drove over the sand. This hot, dead earth, this endless landscape, would swallow her up soon. She would drive through The High Pass. She would take them all to Greenwood the Great. It was too early for hope, too soon for confidence, and so she kept her foot steady on the pedal, her hands relaxed on the wheel. She brushed her fingertips over the detailing. Even after all these years, even the feel of the words pained her. _Ash nazg gimbatul..._

Behind her the flares exploded in the sky in great powdery streaks. Her second-in-command slammed his fist down against the top of the cab and she reached up, shoving the sunroof back.

“We got vehicles from Gundabad! They're firing flares, they want reinforcements from Angmar and Ettenmoors! What is this? Backup? Decoy?”

“It's a detour,” she said.


End file.
